The Cancer League Inc. has been offering a helping hand for 34 years. These are well-healed East Bay women who’ve raised $3 million to fight cancer by holding balls, fashion shows and garden parties.

For those who look skeptically at society matrons with the charitable instincts of the idle rich, remember that $3 million is $3 million. And there’s one other important consideration.

Of The Cancer League’s 50 members, half have battled cancer.

A 50-percent split is further proof that cancer picks its victims randomly, and not by social class. Live in Piedmont or East Oakland, drive a Jaguar or Sentra, its irrelevant. Rich or poor, male or female, regardless of age or ethnicity, cancer strikes with a blindfold, often fatally.

“It’s an equal opportunity disease,” said Mary Lou Weggenmann.

Weggenmann, who lives in the Oakland hills, and two other TCL Inc. members, Lyn Branagh of Orinda and Tiffanie Kalmbach of Piedmont, have experienced cancer, its rampant fear and its uncertain future.

Weggenmann joined TCL Inc. — founded by Diane Prioleau as a charitable nonprofit in 1973 — as a charter member after her father died of cancer at 58. Ten years ago, Weggenmann was informed she had cancer of the fallopian tube after waking up from a hysterectomy.

“It scared me to death,” she said. “All these things go through your mind. You’re just in a daze.”

She took charge of her own condition, choosing a round of chemotherapy followed by surgery and more chemo — a very aggressive counterattack.

“I wanted to live a life of no regrets,” she explained. “I had to wear a wig, so I never had a bad hair day.”

Branagh learned she had breast cancer nine years ago — a lumpectomy that led to radiation and chemotherapy.

“I’m privileged,” she said, “but the worst part of this whole thing is when they tell you that you have it, then you have to figure out what to do with it.”

Fortunately, she was put on a fast track, so that her treatment went quickly and smoothly. She’s convinced fast-tracking is the most critical approach in treating cancer.

Kalmbach was diagnosed in 1997 with a brain tumor. She had surgery and the tumor, the size of a baseball, was benign, fortunately.

She wasn’t out of the woods, though.

“I had a recurrence eight years later,” she said. “I had chemo for a year, and I have to take anti-seizure medicine for the rest of my life.”

All three women feel their cancer is gone, but they still live in trepidation of a recurrence of some form.

“All it needs is one little cell,” Weggenmann said.

“Some little ache,” Branagh noted, “and you think it’s back.”

Did having cancer change the perspective of these women who’ve raised money against cancer?

“It changed my perspective on life in general,” Branagh said. “I stopped worrying about silly things. I grew up a little bit more.”

Branagh and Weggenmann each have two children and four grandchildren. Kalmbach has two children under 7. Cancer can rob a parent or grandparent of the joy of seeing their progeny grow, and then replace it with the anguish of predeceasing them.

Those in TCL Inc., who haven’t had cancer feel honored to share a membership with those who’ve fought their disease so vigorously and valiantly.

“It puts our heart into it,” said Carol Phillips, president of TCL Inc., who obliged this group interview at her Piedmont home. “It bands everyone together, makes everyone work harder, makes everyone believe in every event we work on.”

Such events include the Holly Ball, the Saks Fifth Avenue Fashion Show, the Evening Garden Party at Gumps and the launching of The Cancer League Cookbook. To learn more about TCL Inc., visit http://www.thecancerleagueinc.org.

There’s something singular about TCL Inc. Just ask its members. They believe that, outside of a Texas nonprofit, there’s no other women’s group in the nation doing this kind of anti-cancer work.

And the money generated by the club is donated to all aspects of society — all classes, all ages, all races, all the time.

Researchers said Sunday the mass die-off occurred because unusually large amounts of sea ice forced penguin parents to travel farther in search of food for their young. By the time they returned, only two out of thousands of chicks had survived.